Hardware Wallets

Why Monero?

Monero is secure.

Monero can't be hacked to steal your funds, due to the power of distributed consensus. This means that you are responsible for your own money, and don't have to trust any entity to keep it safe for you.

Monero is private.

The power of the blockchain usually increases security at the cost of privacy, but with Monero's sophisticated privacy-centric technology, you get all of the security benefits of the blockchain without any of the privacy trade-offs.

Monero is untraceable.

By taking advantage of ring signatures, Monero makes it ambiguous which funds have been spent, and thus extremely unlikely that a transaction could be linked to any particular user.

Monero is fungible.

Because of its on-by-default privacy technologies, Monero is fungible, which means that one Monero will always be equal to another. This ensures that there will be no discrimination over the origin or history of your coins, lessening the worry of potential blacklisting by exchanges or vendors.

Guidelines

Breaking the guidelines may result in a deleted post and possible ban.

Discussion of using Monero to break the law is disallowed.

Follow redditquette and the rules of reddit.

Only Monero-related topics/links.

No memes/image macros.

If you have any affiliation with an exchange, product or service that's being discussed, you must disclose that information.

When mentioning other currencies, keep the discussion civil. No zealotry.

I started the process but then saw ShapeShift was asking me for my SSN and became skeptical and then saw people on reddit questioning whether ShapeShift is safe. What would be my best route to trade some of my bitcoins in coinbase for Monero?

Tradeogre has enough volume and there is no KYC there. That's where I usually buy/sell xmr.

Don't leave anything on the exchange though. It's been around for a minute but these little exchanges can turn into vaporware pretty quick and make off with your monies. It's fine to make some quick trades and export to wallets.